Report finds health care coverage in state eroding

Premium increases lead some to cover only part of family

A new study confirms what Californians know all too well: Health insurance costs more, more people are uninsured, and workers are shouldering a larger share of premium costs for employer-based policies.

What’s most revealing in the new report is that the largest decline in employer-sponsored insurance was in dependent coverage.

As premium costs rise, some families have been making the decision to cover only some family members or forgo coverage altogether, according to the study released Tuesday by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

The “State-Level Trends in Employer-Sponsored Health Insurance” study looked at changes between 1999-2000 and 2008-09, focusing on the non-elderly population, to exclude seniors receiving Medicare.

Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, president of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, said the nationwide findings were dismaying.

“For 60 years, American businesses have been the conduit to health insurance for most families, so this decade-long decline in (employer-sponsored insurance) is troubling,” she said. “Policymakers must work hand-in-hand with business leaders and insurers to make certain that this pillar of health insurance doesn’t erode.”

Here are some of its findings for California:

• Employer-sponsored health insurance coverage dropped from 61.5 percent in 1999-2000 to 55.3 percent in 2008-09. While public coverage increased by 4.2 percent, that was not enough to lower the number of uninsured, which was 20 percent in 1999-2000 and 21 percent in 2008-09.

• For Californians with employer-sponsored insurance, coverage for middle-income families dropped from 72.7 percent to 66.9 percent during that period. For low-income families with employee-sponsored insurance, coverage dropped from 30.9 percent to 24.4 percent.

• Coverage of dependents dropped more steeply than for policyholders. Within that decade, the number of policyholders with employer-sponsored health insurance dropped 1.4 percent, but coverage for their dependents dropped 6.1 percent.

• The drop in coverage for at least some family members was greater among low-income families. For families below the poverty level with employer-sponsored insurance, coverage for everyone in the family dropped by more than 10 percent during the decade. In middle-income families, coverage for everyone in the family dropped 4.4 percent.

• Meanwhile, premium costs for employer-sponsored insurance have nearly doubled during the decade, with employees taking on a larger share of costs.

Single coverage (no dependent) annual premiums in California rose from $2,259 in 1999-2000 to $4,456 in 2008-09. Employee premium costs rose from $344 to $768, or 123.4 percent. Employers shoulder a larger portion of the premium, but their share of the increase over the past decade rose 92 percent.

The foundation released a second study, “The Effects of Health Reform on Small Businesses and Their Workers,” that predicts more small businesses will provide insurance for their workers under the Affordable Care Act due to be fully implemented by 2014.